Poemunity — your poem community

You must come to them sideways In rooms webbed in shadow, Sneak a view of their emptiness Without them catching A glimpse of you in return. The secret is, Even the empty bed is a burden to them, A pretense. They are more themselves keeping The company of a blank wall, The company of time and eternity Which, begging your pardon, Cast no image As they admire themselves in the mirror, While you stand to the side Pulling a hanky out To wipe your brow surreptitiously.

In vain thou bid’st me strike the lyre, And sing a song of mirth and glee, Or, kindling with poetic fire, Attempt some higher minstrelsy; In vain, in vain! for every thought That issues from this throbbing brain, Is from its first conception fraught With gloom and darkness, woe and pain. From earliest youth my path has been Cast in life’s darkest, deepest shade, Where no bright ray did intervene, Nor e’er a passing sunbeam strayed; But all was dark and cheerless night, Without one ray of hopeful light. From childhood, then, through many a shock, I’ve battled with the ills of life, Till, like a rude and rugged rock, My heart grew callous in the strife. When other children passed the hours In mirth, and play, and childish glee, Or gathering the summer flowers By gentle brook, or flowery lea, I sought the wild and rugged glen Where Nature, in her sternest mood, Far from the busy haunts of men, Frowned in the darksome solitude. There have I mused till gloomy night, Like the death-angel’s brooding wing, Would shut out every thing from sight, And o’er the scene her mantle fling; And seeking then my lonely bed To pass the night in sweet repose, Around my fevered, burning head, Dark visions of the night arose; And the stern scenes which day had viewed In sterner aspect rose before me, And specters of still sterner mood Waved their menacing fingers o’er me. When the dark storm-fiend soared abroad, And swept to earth the waving grain, On whirlwind through the forest rode, And stirred to foam the heaving main, I loved to mark the lightning’s flash, And listen to the ocean’s roar, Or hear the pealing thunder’s crash, And see the mountain torrents pour Down precipices dark and steep, Still bearing, in their headlong course To meet th’ embrace of ocean deep, Mementoes of the tempest’s force; For fire and tempest, flood and storm, Wakened deep echoes in my soul, And made the quickening life-blood warm With impulse that knew no control; And the fierce lightning’s lurid flash Rending the somber clouds asunder, Followed by the terrific crash Which marks the hoarsely rattling thunder, Seemed like the gleams of lurid light Which flashed across my seething brain, Succeeded by a darker night, With wilder horrors in its train. And I have stood on ocean’s shore, And viewed its dreary waters roll, Till the dull music of its roar Called forth responses in my soul; And I have felt that there was traced An image of my inmost soul, In that dark, dreary, boundless waste, Whose sluggish waters aimless roll— Save when aroused by storms’ wild force It lifts on high its angry wave, And thousands driven from their course Find in its depths a nameless grave. Whene’er I turned in gentler mood To scan the old historic page, It was not where the wise and good, The Bard, the Statesman, or the Sage, Had drawn in lines of living light, Lessons of virtue, truth and right; But that which told of secret league, Where deep conspiracies were rife, And where, through foul and dark intrigue, Were sowed the seeds of deadly strife. Where hostile armies met to seal Their country’s doom, for woe or weal; Where the grim-visaged death-fiend drank His full supply of human gore, And poured through every hostile rank The tide of battle’s awful roar; For then my spirit seemed to soar Away to where such scenes were rife, And high above the battle’s roar Sit as spectator of the strife— And in those scenes of war and woe, A fierce and fitful pleasure know. There was a time when I possessed High notions of Religion’s claim, Nor deemed its practice, at the best, Was but a false and empty name; But when I saw the graceless deeds Which marked its strongest votaries’ path, How senseless bigots, o’er their creeds, Blazing with wild fanatic wrath, Let loose the deadly tide of war, Spread devastation near and far, Through scenes of rapine, blood and shame, Of cities sacked, and towns on flame, Caused unbelievers’ hearts to feel The arguments of fire and steel By which they sought t’ enforce the word, And make rebellious hearts approve Those arguments of fire and sword As mandates of the God of love— How could I think that such a faith, Whose path was marked by fire and blood, That sowed the seeds of war and death, Had issued from a holy God? There was a time when I did love, Such love as those alone can know, Whose blood like burning lava moves, Whose passions like the lightning glow; And when that ardent, truthful love, Was blighted in its opening bloom, And all around, below, above, Seemed like the darkness of the tomb, ’Twas then my stern and callous heart, Riven in its most vital part, Seemed like some gnarled and knotted oak, That, shivered by the lightning’s stroke, Stands in the lonely wanderer’s path, A ghastly monument of wrath. Then how can I attune the lyre To strains of love, or joyous glee? Break forth in patriotic fire, Or soar on higher minstrelsy, To sing the praise of virtue bright, Condemn the wrong, and laud the right; When neither vice nor guilt can fling A darker shadow o’er my breast, Not even Virtue’s self can bring, Unto my moody spirit, rest. It may not be, it cannot be! Let others strike the sounding string, And in rich strains of harmony, Songs of poetic beauty sing; But mine must still the portion be, However dark and drear the doom, To live estranged from sympathy, Buried in doubt, despair and gloom; To bare my breast to every blow, To know no friend, and fear no foe, Each generous impulse trod to dust, Each noble aspiration crushed, Each feeling struck with withering blight, With no regard for wrong or right, No fear of hell, no hope of heaven, Die all unwept and unforgiven, Content to know and dare the worst Which mankind’s hate, and heaven’s curse, Can heap upon my living head, Or cast around my memory dead; And let them on my tombstone trace, Here lies the Pariah of his race.

Some species can crack pavement with their shoots to get their share of sun some species lay a purple froth of eggs and leave it there to sprinkle tidepools with tadpole confetti some species though you stomp them in the carpet have already stashed away the families that will inherit every floor at midnight But others don’t go forth and multiply as boldly male and female peeling the bamboo their keepers watching in despair or those endangered species numbered individually and mapped from perch to oblivious perch For weeks the world it seemed was plagued with babies forests dwindling into cradles rows of women hissing for an obstetrician babies no one could feed babies received by accident like misdirected mail from God so many babies people hired women to hold them babies babies everywhere but not a one to name When we got home the local news showed us a mother with quintuplets she was suckling them in shifts a mountain of sheets universally admired a goddess of fertility her smile could persuade the skies to rain Her litter slept ointment-eyed in pink wool caps while Dad ran his hand through his hair thinking maybe of money as he stood surveying his crowded living room his wealth of heartbeats Pizza and pop that night and there unasked inside the bottlecap was Sorry—Try Again you set it down and did not speak of it the moon flanked by her brood of stars that night a chaste distracted kiss goodnight that night your body quiet having spilled its secret your palms flat on your belly holding holding Forgive me if I had no words that night but I was wondering in the silence still begetting silence whether to console you if I consoled you it would make the loss your loss and so we laid beside ourselves a while because I had no words until our bodies folded shut our bodies closed around hope like a book preserving petals a book we did not open till the morning when we found hope dry and brittle but intact

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi; they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi. They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi. A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi. Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi. My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name. I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi. When I turned 33 my father said,It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi. I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name— though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi.

I was out last night, the very picture of a sneak, dark and hunched-over, breaking and entering again. Why do I do it? And why, when I can afford serious residences, do I keep to this one room? Perhaps if I had not lost track of the difference between the real and the ideal it would never have happened. I hide here almost entirely now. When I go out, when I creep into those silent houses, I steal newspapers. An armload, no more than I can carry comfortably. Sometimes they are already tied up on the side porch or by the kitchen stove. Nobody misses them. They think each other or the maid has carried them out to the street. They say there is something intractable out there, the Law, the Right to Privacy, the World. In the days when my obsession was only a wound-up toy, squeaking and jabbering in my chest, I could have believed them. I sit by the window today (There is very little space left now, thought I have left corridors wide enough to walk through so I won't lose touch) holding my latest on my lap, handling them, fondling them, taking in every column. They are becoming more and more precious. My delusion grows and spreads. Lately it seems to me as I read of murders, wars, bankruptcies, jackpot winnings, the news if written in that perfect style of someone speaking to the one who knows and loves him. Long before they miss me, I think, the room will be perfectly solid. When they break in the door and, unsurprised, hardened to the most bizarre vagaries, begin to carry out my treasure, death's what they'll look for underneath it all, those fluent, muscled, imaginative men, sweating in their innocent coveralls. But I will be out in broad daylight by then, answering, having accepted utterly the heart's conditions. Tell them I wish them well, always, that I've been happy.

Miser time grows profligate near the end: unpinching and unplanning, abandoning the whole idea of savings. It’s hard to understand but time apparently expands with its diminishing. The door thrown wide on sliding hills of high- denomination bills and nothing much to buy.

Summoned by conscious recollection, she would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking, before or after dinner. But they are in this other room, the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch embracing. He holds her as tightly as he can, she buries herself in his body. Morning, maybe it is evening, light is flowing through the room. Outside, the day is slowly succeeded by night, succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room does not change, so it is plain what is happening. They are trying to become one creature, and something will not have it. They are tender with each other, afraid their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment when they fall away again. So they rub against each other, their mouths dry, then wet, then dry. They feel themselves at the center of a powerful and baffled will. They feel they are an almost animal, washed up on the shore of a world— or huddled against the gate of a garden— to which they can’t admit they can never be admitted.

When ocean-clouds over inland hills Sweep storming in late autumn brown, And horror the sodden valley fills, And the spire falls crashing in the town, I muse upon my country’s ills— The tempest bursting from the waste of Time On the world’s fairest hope linked with man’s foulest crime. Nature’s dark side is heeded now— (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)— A child may read the moody brow Of yon black mountain lone. With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, And storms are formed behind the storm we feel: The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

On this first day of spring, snow covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably with the new blossoms like identical twins brought up in different hemispheres. It is not what Housman meant when he wrote of the cherry hung with snow, though he also knew how death can mistake the seasons, and if he made it all sound pretty, that was our misreading in those high school classrooms where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite his poems. Now the weather is always looming in the background, trying to become more than merely scenery, and though today it is telling us something we don't want to hear, it is all so unpredictable, so out of control that we might as well be children again, hearing the voices of thunder like baritone uncles shouting in the next room as we try to sleep, or hearing the silence of snow falling soft as a coverlet, even in springtime whispering: relax, there is nothing you can possibly do about any of this.

I. Pledge Sister Everyone looks at me as if I’m a rainbow drawn by a slow child. Because they can eat without a ringing in their ears. They can ask for gravy. They miss the point I’m always aiming at their heads. The pills I suck are like me: pink, fizzy, and totally legal. They turn listening to noise into a type of eating. Everyone wants to know about my pubic hair. They say they’re looking for signs that I’m dying, but what they really want is the food melting on the fork when they finally say none for me, thanks. They worship the pain they think I’m in. Meanwhile, I’d eat a beetle if I thought its legs could make my lashes longer. I’ve got all these organs inside me and I can’t resist teasing them to see if they’ll go away. Everyone likes it when I finally die in the magazine article: the cries no one heard, the love I needed massaged into my hamburger meat. No one knows I am the flower, the bee, the wind, the rain, the dirt: all the vectors. No one knows how well I sleep, how well I lie in bed not sleeping. I run and sharpen the bones of my face. The other girls say they don’t care if their shadows aren’t museum quality. They’re happy just knowing they’re made out of marble. They have no respect for the chisel I would take to the human race. II. Spring Break Love isn’t above starting this way: you can drop me from a second-story window if you pin me against it first. It doesn’t want to start this way, and who can blame it. There’s the electric outlet and then there’s the baby finger stuck into it. I was both. A couple nights later, on a busy street, I recognized his walk the way a mouse must recognize a hole it used last winter. Sure, I wish the universe could clear its throat. Sure, I’m sick of the source of great fire always being the sun. A few nights ago he peeled off of me as if he were my own skin and he didn’t want the job. But afterwards he kissed me as if to apologize for every brutal thing he was strong enough to have just done. Later he walked me across town, and we ended up in an expensive place, in the middle of a loud song. He looked right at me the whole time, as if I were still the one thing he would choose, even though the damn thing couldn’t stop spinning and was clearly broken. III. The Essay It is dumb to know what one has longing for. I am moved by the orange stitching on a girl’s corduroy book bag. I, too, wonder what I am happy about. There is always something natural in pieces like sand or snow. If early Western cultures had perceived the surface of the day as wrapping around them like a shell, I wouldn’t be here right now. Not exactly me, not exactly here, not exactly now. The world spreads out from how we look at one thing. I tell myself this and then I look at things for hours. Don’t think I don’t know how stupid I sound. Please, do not think I don’t know. IV. Fifth-Year Senior Everything tastes like love. That’s what makes me nervous. That and I wish I knew what I will act like later today. I watch myself being kind sometimes and I think, is there nothing you won’t fake? But that’s unforgiving. A smile, a purse, an ax, these are all things you pick up and carry. Lately, I pick up the lightest things. I am floating and honored to drag myself back and forth like a huge feather across my sleeping boyfriend. He thanks me by actually changing under my touch. He is smooth and I worry that I barely feel him, but doing things no one should see seems the only good use of my time. He buys me jewelry I never wear. I love it because it piles up, which proves I’m alive. The boys my age cry more than the girls do. They’re always losing games, and those are very symbolic. My girlfriends and I can’t get off the couch anymore, and summer is seeping in under the doors. My friend says people are wrong about us. It’s the ripe fruit that gets eaten. I say the truth is I don’t work at things because then I get them. V. Graduation Address I like to be at the end and look back at the beginning and see all the stupidity there. I think we are young. The posters all say so, and though no one ever officially joined our clubs, we designed many logos. The beautiful, dumb girl you loved was everyone at our lecture, and what a strange boy we all were in the corner with our walking stick, talking too much about the board games back home. Many of you were next to me at the talk where I became hyper-aware of the creeping in my heart. As you know, I became obsessed with the on and off inside my chest. Failure seems to be one half of the deal, which is why I have occasionally climbed on top of some of you and then left the room. But there is another way to look at it: like you, I am a house for a wet animal that is sneaking up on something it is terrified by. What is that something? The wet animal doesn’t know. The wet animal doesn’t even have eyes. There’s no way that wet animal isn’t brave.